Stone Songlines

Being a Libran, I'm allowed to change my mind. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, lolol.

In an earlier blog, I was talking of letting go of teaching to focus on my art. Shortly thereafter, I had a lovely birthday card from a friend with some beautiful words about enjoying what I've been teaching to her and others. It really touched my heart and caused me to rethink.

Theother thing that caused me to rethink was when I found I was thinking of starting to teach art classes linking art and astrological events when I move to our new home, at St Elsewhere, wherever that is, as we're still waiting to hear if we've sold our home.

I'm also working on how to teach online once the move is under our belt, as I've found the video input of a Creative Goddess e-course I'm following to be quite inspirational. Anyway, nothing's going to happen in the immediate future until we've pulled up our roots here and, in our gipsy-like fashion, head off to new (and hopefully warmer) pastures further north.

So watch this space for future developments and thanks to my friend for her beautiful words.

A while back I posted a note about a crone ritual and Rosetta asked me for more details. I've taken a bit of time to get back to this subject, for which I apologise. Unfortunately, I can't remember any more about the details of the crone ritual than that which I wrote down. It happened as we were preparing to move back to the UK and the stress of that move wiped out a lot of what I remember in the period just before the move.

However, I did a search on line and came up with the following site which has some lovely ideas for rituals. This is the link and I hope it is helpful:

http://www.tryskelion.com/tryskelion/crone2.htm

If anyone's also interested, there's a Crone magazine you can track down online which is available as an e-magazine at a cost of around ten Canadian dollars. I've purchased a copy myself and it's very interesting and thought-provoking.

I could not resist reproducing this poem on my blog as it is to upliftingand mirthful. It came in my e-mail in a post from Panhala, a list operated on Yahoo groups, which each days sends you poetry, a lovely scene and great music. It's a wonderfully uplifting gift from Joe Riley who operates the list. If you'd like to get this daily post, you can suscribe by joining Yahoo groups and doing a search for Panhala, or do a search for Panhala if you're already listed with a Yahoo group. Enjoy this poetry, folks, it's terrific for your heart and soul.

Ode To Gaiety

Go gloom

Begone glum and grim

Off  with the drab drear and grumble

It's time

its past time

to come undone and come out laughing

time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets

and feed them to the sourpusses

Come frisky pals

Come forth wily wags

Loosen your screws and get off your rocker

Untie the strait lacer

Tie up the smarty pants

Tickle the crosspatch with josh and guffaw

Share quips and pranks with every victim

of grouch pomposity or blah

Woe to the bozo who says No to

tee hee ho ho and ha ha

Boo to the cleancut klutz who

wipes the smile off his face

Without gaiety

freedom is a chastity belt

Without gaiety

life is a wooden kimono

Come cheerful chums

Cut up and carry on

Crack your pots and split your sides

Boggle the bellyacher

Convulse the worrywart

Pratfall the prissy poos and the fuddy duds

Take drollery to heart or end up a deadhead

at the guillotine of the mindless

Be wise and go merry round

whatever you cherish

what you love to enjoy what you live to exert

And when the high spirits

call your number up

count on merriment all the way to the countdown

Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle

Long live gaiety

for all the laity

~ James Broughton ~

I recently got hold of a book by Priestess Brandi Auset called "The Goddess Guide - Exploring the Attributes and Correspondences of the Divine Feminine".

This is an incredibly useful book which I highly recommend.  It gives a summary of a big range of goddesses by name in cultures through the world and what they represent.  The next section lists attributes such as "enlightenment" ,"infertility", "destruction", "woodlands and forests", and so on, with the names of the goddesses listed under the attributes so that you've got a handy reference guide if you want to conduct a ritual and want to know the particular goddess to invoke for that ritual.The next section lists the colour rays and associated goddesses. The section after this relates to the elements - earth, fire, air and water - and the names of goddessesd associated with those elements, again if you want to work with these goddess energies in rituals or in your daily life.The following section relates to the wheel of the year and goddesses to work with for particular occasions, such as Yule, Imbolc and so on. And the final section looks at the phases of a woman's life - Maiden,Mother, Crone - and the goddess energies to work with in relation to these aspects of a woman's life.

It's a terrific book, a lot of work has gone into it, and I can highly recommend it as a useful addition to your array of goddess-related goodies lurking around your home,workspace or studio.

Years ago, when I'd been doing Tarot readings for a while, I did a reading with a woman in which we covered the issueof mutual forgiveness involving a relative.  She listened in silence and then, as she got up to leave, said: "Thank you, anyway", a sure sign that the idea of forgiveness was for her, at least in the immediate future, a dead duck. Lluckily I had enough readings under my belt by then not to get disheartened.  A friend also told me recently that a shop owner she knew had glass stones with words engraved in them like "love", "faith", charity, and so on.  All these walked out the door, but the ones with "forgiveness" on them stayed put.

So I'm adding on a bit more here about forgiveness because in my experience this is one of the biggest challenges for us - to let go of past wrongs, to forgive the person (which does not mean approval of what they've done, by the way) and to cleanse ourselves of any bitterness or anger from the past.

A lack of forgiveness, to me, does not affect the person we need to forgive.  It affects ourselves deeply.  It prevents us from moving forward in our lives free of the burden of anger about the past. And I think many people misunderstand forgiveness.  It does not mean that we say what a person has done to us is okay.  It means we can acknowledge that harm was done to us but that now we need to let that person go to their own lives, while we cleanse ourselves of the burden of being unable to forgive.  The only person dragged down by an inability to forgive is ourself. 

But also another myth is that we ca nforgive overnight and perhaps that's why people are reluctant to takeon board the idea of forgiveness becaue of misconceptions.  I don't think in most cases it's possible nor desirable to forgive in one shot at it.  Forgiveness should not be a mechanical act where we really haven't forgiven deep within.  It needs to be an ongoing process to which we return with dignity and grace, to tell ourselves we have forgiven, until that point when we can look within ourselves, take a deep breath and feel so much lighter because now we know thatf orgiveness has happened. 

It is an act of grace for ourselves and, with any luck, it's an act of grace for the person to whom forgiveness is being extended.  Not that we can ask for repentance as a return for forgiveness.  If we do get repentance, that's the icing on the cake.  But forgiveness is not a quid pro quo - it's an unconditional act which opens us up to greater things in our heart than were previously possible when the weight of an inability to forgive acts like a crushing stone on  our heart. The process of forgiving my father for the wrongs I've perceived has been long and painful.  I think my series of paintings have brought forward the blessing of forgiveness and letting go and now, synchronistically, my father has turned up in spirit to ask for an act of forgiveness which I can now willingly, gladly and lovingly extend to him, from my heart to his.

 I've uploaded pics of a series of artworks which I've commented on in earlier blogs.  I wanted to post them  together so that you can get a sense of their progress.  So please bear with the bits and pieces all over the place in this blog. The first painting below, in retrospect and I didn't realise at the time, represents the wheel of fortune, a letting go of the old and an expansion into the new and more fortunate (hopefully) phase of my life.

The next painting above was the first Dreamscape I did in line with Jamie Ridler's Full Moon Dreamscape project.  Although I didn't, again,  realise it at the time, it really was a big jump into the new for me.

The artwork above left is the third in this series, which has followed the New and full Moon Phases, as well as the moving of Pluto from retrograde to forward again.  This painting symbolished some real heart healing of inner child stuff and for me is one of the most powerful I've ever created.  It's a big step forward from all the yellows, oranges and reds of the past year.  My friend looked at it and immediately called it The Tree of Love which I consider quite inspirational.

And finally, the painting on the right is the last in this particular series which is all heart colours - pinks and greens and turquoises - which to me represents the emergence of myself into a new part of my life free of old rubbish.

And, after all this, the most amazing miracle happened yesterday, Sunday. My friend called in from her visit to the local Spiritualist Centre and told me the medium appearing that day had had a reading for me.  She had asked if anyone knew a Maureen, and my friend thought of another Maureen she knows, as I always go by the moniker of 'Mo'.  The medium said that the spirit with whom she was in contact had said that he'd hoped I'd be there today, but that I did visit the Centre. Luckily a mutal friend poked my friend in the back and reminded her that my full name is Maureen.  The medium then said that the spirit was  my father and that she, my friend, was being asked to pass on to me that he had turned up to ask for forgiveness, to tell me that he loved me, and that he wanted to send me a huge bunch of multi-coloured roses.

I can't tell you how healing this was for me.  I had a very fractious relationship with my father, the deeper he got into alcoholism, the more intense his paranoia that I was after his money.  As it happens we did make some sort of peace before he died and had a good farewell on the day he died.  But this to me was a final key in the door of the past, as I am making preparations to move into a quite new part of my life.  I also visited a gem fair on Saturday, the day before this message, where I brought home with me a beautiful light green polished Malachite pendant.  I've always found Malachite to be a heavy duty heart healing stone, and now I know that this pendant will help guide my heart through the doorway to the temple of forgiveness for my father, a most beneficial gift from the Universe which I bless with all my heart.

I am posting this because I can see, looking back, a series of synchronistic happenings and a pattern of universal energy which, with our being here on the material plane, we can often overlook.  Here in Traralgon I visited the Spiritualist Centre and have made good friends with many of the women I've met there. I've opened up in the past period to being an artist and aligning my art with the energy cycles of the Moon and Pluto.  And as I've done this, some deep heart healing has happened which has now been blessed with a loving message from my father, something he was unable to give to me in this life. 

I wouldurge you to keep your inner eye open to recognise the miracles in our lives of universal energy which is always present.  It provides a magnificence to the progression of our path in life which enriches us and, in turn,  enriches all though with whom we come in contact through our own personal transformation and heart opening.

 I've been raving on about rituals to my friends, because formalised ritual is something increasingly fading from our society.

I've mentioned the term "formalised ritual" as I think there are a whole heap of other rituals going on at present such as Facebook updates, using mobile phones, catching up with friends over coffee, and so on.

My interest has been in rituals which reflect the energies around us - the Full Moon, the New Moon,

the Spring Equinox coming up on 23rd September (Autumn Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere), Harvest Time, celebrating puberty, birth and menopause, and so on.

Since I cameacross Jamie Ridler's Full Moon Dreamboard concept, I've been pursuing the idea of Dreamboards both for the Full and New Moons.

Last Full Moon, myself and two friends decided to create Dreamboards for releasing from our lives what we no longer need. Pat provided some lovely paper she'd come across in Singapore which is sort of feng shui oriented in that you write on it what you want to let go of, or what your dreams are, or whatever you have in mind, and then the paper burns easily to send your thoughts into the Universe.

Pat's Dreamboard (which her granddaughter absolutely adores)

So we started the ritual with writing down what we wanted to let go of and what we wanted to have enter our lives as a consequence of the clearing-out of old, stuck energies. At the end of the artwork for Pat and Sue, they burned their papers. I kept mine as I started my ownartwork but intended to take longer over my creation in line with Pluto moving from retrograde to forward motion again (more of this in my previous  blog).

This is Sue's Dreamboard

We had a great collection of magazines from which to cut out images that drew us, but that went right out of the window when we got started, as you can see with the two Dreamscapes above. 

What I love in this sortof ritual is how art can be so inspirational for those taking part and, also, how varied our creative output is, celebrating the great kaleidoscope of talent which illuminates and permeates all of us here on Mother Earth.

I had a really strong dream two nightsago, one which left me feeling in quite a bit of turmoil when I woke up.  I don't know if you have dreams like this,most leave quite pleasant - and rather curious - feelings.  But some leave me feeling drained and upset.  This was one of those. Or rathert hree of those - I had three dreams in a row, with the first two wrapped up by the third dream.  I'm not going into all the details, but the last one was rather nice - someone I bumped into recently turned up to hand me a crystal, and gifts of crystals I can handle any day.

I've also had a headache, an upset stomach and felt distinctly seedy and a bit turmoil-ish (I made that word up, don't waste time checking it out in a dictionary) since the dream.  It took me a while to realise that this is not only around my 62nd birthday (today, 27th September), it's also the time my mother passed into spirit.  She died on 21st September, two days after her 63rd birthday, and, due to a public holiday, I buried her in 1988 on my 41st birthday. Not the best birthday, as you can imagine, but over the years the grief softens sonow I'm quite able to celebrate my birthday along with loving memories of my mum.

However, I've been interested to find out, from the Astrograph astrology software programme I've got, that Pluto was square my natal Pluto when my  mother crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  And now Pluto is square my natal Sun and conjunct my Ascendant.  Don't get your knickers in a twist about the astro terminology, as I'll give you the summary below. The first one is Pluto square my natal Pluto and this is what the text says:

"This transit transforms your urge for self-renewal and regeneration...Long buried parts of your psyche are likely to be activated by this transit.  The death and rebirth energy of Pluto is up for you during this time, symbolizing the process of letting go of behaviors that no longer serve you in order to make way for new parts of yourself to emerge, and significant life changes are certain to result.....Sometimes these life changes will manifest more on an internal level, and sometimes outer events may bring them, such as the death in your immediate family, or some other radical alteration of your circumstances. This means confronting parts of yourself that you would rather not face, and you may be tempted to evade this encounter. But running away from the battle will not help, for eventually you must admit the dark unknown and integrate it with your conscious self, if  you are to move towards wholeness and peace of mind."

I wasn't into astrology at the time and I don't know whether I would, even if I had, have recognised the sands shifting under my feet. Mum's death removed her as the peacemaker between myself and my father and our hidden conflicts came right out into the open.  They were really only resolved when I made my peace with Dad as he was dying. But at that time I went to see a psychologist as no-one would talk about my mum dying and I found it hard to cope. She (the psychologist) opened up perspectives for me of family dysfunctionality.  And also opened me up to writing poetry and, eventually, to the huge change of direction I had in 1964 when we moved to Queensland and I embraced a more spiritual lifestyle, crystals,Reiki, visionary art and teaching.

Moving along from there, I have actually been creating artwork in line with planetary cycles, including the New Moon,Full Moon and Pluto moving from Retrograde to Direct.  I get a daily e-mail from the Mystic Medusa website, which I really recommend, and it reminds me of the various galactic happenings. In the most recent period, I started what turned out to be the Tree of Life painting and completed it as Pluto turned direct from being retrograde.  Mystic reminded readers that this period of Pluto Retrograde/Direct had influences going back to 1995 (when I really started getting into newagey type stuf), and to February 2008 which is when I got a pinched sciatic nerve in my left buttock, four months after Dad died and as we were selling up to move south down here to Traralgon.

I've just completed my Life is not a Garden artwork, and happily all the crappy stuff I've been feeling has melted away on my birthday so I feel pretty terrific today.  My pinched sciatic nerve is finally getting heaps better too.  So looking at Pluto in my life now, I foundit is square mynatal Sun.  And the text reads, in part:

"This is an extended period when many factors in your life could radically alter, because Pluto, symbolizing the process of decay and change,death and re-birth, is making its force strongly felt.  You are in themidst of tremendous and far-reaching changes to the fundamenta lpatternof your life at this time. These changes are for evolutionary purpose, and so they are in your best interest in the long run....During this period of time, you have tremendous untapped energy for renewal and transformation. You will emerge from this period of time more free in yourself and more confident of your true path in life."

There'sa bit more along these lines but I don't want to bore you stupid with swags of text.  Suffice it to say that yesterday I realised that, at 62, I'm one year off the age my mum died.  She was 63.  I havealways had a dread of popping my clogs at the same age, but these last three dreams of mine seem to have cleared out these fears.  I'm quite different from my mother who, I feel, gave up the ghost when herown mother died and also because she hated it here in Australia, away fromall her old familiar life.  I, on the other hand, love Australiaand am more than happy to be  back here after my two years in the UK although I do really miss my stepdaughter, stepdaughters and stepgreatgrandkids.  I admit that leaving them behind in the UK left a hole in my heart.

Interestingly,I've felt more and more drawn to doing art and writing my book, rather than teaching. I land in places and seem to end up teaching, have done so since my life changed in 1994 in the move to Queensland. I sort of get thesense that the feelings of responsibility and reliability that were drummed into me from a young age have left me with feeling I ought" to teach, and we all know how fearsome that word "ought" is.

I feelnow that it's time for little ol' moi, to focus on what feeds my heart and soul, to let go of teaching which I find quite tiring and draining,and to focus on teaching through my writing and experiencing the joy of my creativity through artwork. 

And as I'vereached this decision, on Thursday I went to see my accountant to finalise my 2008-9 accounts for the taxation office.  It turns out thatthe greater part of my self-earned income this year has come from thesale of my artwork.  And my accountant decided that the best category now for me with the Taxation Office is as an artist.  It felt very funny to have myself listed as an artist, as I have no formal training,and Iknow I ain't up there with the Salvador Dali's and Matisse's of theworld.  But art is incredibly healing for me, it is calling to me, so now I'm embarking on a new course in life, in my new incarnation as anartist, something I never dreamed would be possible back in 1988 whenPluto was square my natal Pluto.  

I've come full circle.

Talking about rituals in an earlier blog reminded me of a beautiful ritual I went through with twelve other women to honour our transit through the menopause and our embarcation on the next phase of our lives as Wise Women. These are our crone years, with the original meaning of "crone" being "crown", synchronising with our crown chakras and remembering that we came from All That Is and will be returning to All That Is, however that has resonance for us as individuals.

I finished my menopause in 2002, the year I returned to the UK. We were asked to bring a friend with us and two of my friends came along. We women who were being honoured as Wise Women gathered outside then entered the ritual space singing songs to honour Mother Earth, with our women guests singing along. We all sat in a circle and shared our various experiences. The lady who co-ordinated the ritual had also created lovely bags for us and in these we place the items which each of us had brought along to offer to the other women. I remember I brought rose quartz to signify the love in the rest of our lives. One woman had sewn small hearts with a rip in each, sewn up, to represent the heartaches we experienced on our life journey and honour how we had learned from these experiences and grown on our life journey. Another had a bracelet of wool woven in the suffragette colours of green andviolet, and so on.

Then our friends washed our hands and feet to signify letting go of the past, and anointed us with oils to honour our journey into our Wise Women years.

It was truly a wonderful, loving experience  which demonstrated to me the power of ritual, something very much lacking in our busy, busy lives today. It's why I like the fact that I've been drawn to honour theMoon's phases with ritual in recent months, and will create another ritual to honour the Spring Equinox on 23rd September (Autumn Equinoxin northern parts of the world).

As I've mentioned in the previous post, we received an offer for our home a couple of days after putting it up for sale.  We had been looking at a couple of homes for sale, one on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, and another close to the border with Queensland and NSW where we used to live. I was drawn to the first home but I know I was ignoring warning signs from my inner wisdom that there were problems.  I was also aware that, while my husband liked the second home, it's also very isolated and requires a lot of travel to get any shopping of any kind.

Interestingly, the night before we got the offer, I had a very clear dream that these two homes were not for us and that a third was in the offing.  The dream went as follows:

"I'm taken to a home by man who shows me round the house.  It's fairly spacious but I notice that there's a toilet in public view. The man doesn't seem to keen on my taking this house.

He takes me to another house which I have to reach over lots of rocks, and after falling in mud and getting coated in mud.  When I get to this house, the man tells me he's changed his mind about selling it to me.

At the third house he shows me, we climb into a Lighthouse, climbing easily up stairs, past a kitchen which will provide us with lovely food, until we reach a place with a lovely outlook.  Close to the house, I'm shown how to open a postbox by a woman who lives nearby."

When I woke up, it seemed clear to me that my inner wisdom was clearly telling me that the two houses we had in mind were not suitable. The first wasn't any good because of a lack of privacy (I'd noticed that this house is close to the boundary with the house in the next block and noise would be a factor, we want somewhere peaceful), while the second house had a lot of obstacles and is in fact on a very steep block which would be hard to cope with as I have some mobility problems.

The last house is obviously the one for us - being that it's a "light" house, bringing in spiritual nourishment for us, with the nourishment being signified by the kitchen dishing us up food (would be nice to find a home where the cooking was done for you, wouldn't it, lol?), plus a lot of communication will open up there (via the postbox).

We have no idea where this third house is at present, we are simply keeping our eyes open as I know that what we need will eventuate at the right time.  We have a 60-day settlement period with this offer which is fine by us, gives us plenty of time to sort out stuff out and start packing.  Interestingly, I have been letting go of much of my stuff as I really feel the urge to lighten up, and it is walking out of the door with friends. 

I'll keep you posted as to developments with our home sale. We aren't counting our chickens yet as we did have an offer fall through once, but we are keeping positive that all will fall into place if it's in our highest interests,  the highest interests of the buyer, and the highest interests of the Universe.